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Dropbox is adding a new option for how its users can share files. Dropbox Transfer introduces a way to send files between people rather than simply sharing access for collaboration.

Files can be dragged and dropped directly from your computer or from within Dropbox storage. When you’re ready to send, Dropbox will create a link that can be shared with anyone so that they can have their own copy. The original file will remain in your possession. Transfer lets you send files of up to 100GB, a big leap over the file cap for sharing on most email services.

If you’re using Dropbox Transfer in a professional capacity, you can customize the download page to show your own uploaded image or just to set a different stock background color or artwork.

There are also options for securing the files you send. The Transfer links can have a password applied to them or set an expiration date. If you want, you can be notified that the file has been received and track how many times the link has been accessed.

Dropbox Transfer is currently in beta testing. It is slated to roll out to all users soon, but Dropbox didn’t provide any further details about its timeline to fully launch the transfer option.

Further Reading

Many tech companies have gotten on the bandwagon of file-sharing programs, meaning that Dropbox has more competition now than when it launched back in 2008. It has faced a few security issues over the years, including a theft of nearly 7 million alleged username/password pairs in 2014 and a hack that impacted 68 million accounts in 2016.

Not a great write up. I was scratching my head over what this new functionality was suppose to be for. I ended up googling and going to another article, which explained in better detail why someone would want to use this feature.

Not a great write up. I was scratching my head over what this new functionality was suppose to be for. I ended up googling and going to another article, which explained in better detail why someone would want to use this feature.

Disagree. I like short and concise. I don’t need a training wheels version of how file transfer works. Engadget writes to a different audience, and their story reads like an advertorial to me. I found the business features (ie., the customizable visual appearance of the transfer page) most interesting to me (outside of the 100 GB limit), but my eyes had glazed over by the time Engadget got to it.

Not a great write up. I was scratching my head over what this new functionality was suppose to be for. I ended up googling and going to another article, which explained in better detail why someone would want to use this feature.

Disagree. I like short and concise. I don’t need a training wheels version of how file transfer works. Engadget writes to a different audience, and their story reads like an advertorial to me. I found the business features (ie., the customizable visual appearance of the transfer page) most interesting to me (outside of the 100 GB limit), but my eyes had glazed over by the time Engadget got to it.

I found the wording of Ars confusing. I re-read it 3 or 4 times and still had no idea what was supposed to be the difference from the regular sharing that has existed for years. I feel like the following section from Engadet actually answered that question and it is fairly short still

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Right now, when you share a file or folder from your Dropbox with someone, any changes made to it sync. So if you delete the folder or replace its contents, the person you sent it to won't be able to access it anymore. Transfer, on the other hand, sends a copy of the file so that you can share it with someone and they can download it regardless of whether they use Dropbox or not. And since Transfer sends a copy of the file, you can change or delete things without those changes affecting the recipient.

Ars version on other hand did a terrible job of explaining the differences. Reading the following just sounds like exactly what Dropbox already was doing. I didn't really get what they meant by "their own copy":

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Dropbox will create a link that can be shared with anyone so that they can have their own copy. The original file will remain in your possession

Generally I agree with you that Ars is for a different audience, but in this case I feel like it was more of Ars just doing a bad job explaining a new feature then anything.

Not a great write up. I was scratching my head over what this new functionality was suppose to be for. I ended up googling and going to another article, which explained in better detail why someone would want to use this feature.

Meh, since Dropbox limited their free accounts to 3 devices I have abandoned them for OneDrive.

Yeah. I was not impressed that they sent out no communication at all about this change. All the emails I get from them, and they didn't think maybe they should mention this? They go out of their way to hide the 3 device limitation, and don't even mention it on the plan comparison page. I got surprised by it when I got a new machine and couldn't link it. I would have paid, but the cheapest plan is $10 for 2TB and I'm using 3GB. No thanks.

Working on migrating to something else... just not sure what. Might be the push I need to self-host something.

I took a look at the other options after the big Dropbox price increase and concluded they still have enough advantages that I’m sticking with them for now. Notably:

* Robustness. Dropbox has no problem with me pulling thousands of changes from a huge git repo. Both Google Drive and OneDrive choked badly - sync hangs and duplicate files (iCloud Drive did fine although was very slow to finish syncing up all the changes)* File Requests (https://help.dropbox.com/files-folders/ ... le-request). Super niche feature most people probably don’t know about, but it’s incredibly handy when you need to get a big file from someone and don’t want to leave it to them to figure out how to send it.* Direct linking to files. Append “?raw=1” to any Dropbox link and you can view the file directly without the Dropbox UI. You can also embed images stored in Dropbox this way.* Easy link sharing. OneDrive/Google Drive/iCloud Drive all let you share links allowing anyone with the link access to the file, but they all make you jump through extra hoops to get a shareable link and default to more limited access. Dropbox just lets me right-click and get a link immediately.

I do worry about the direction Dropbox is heading, especially with the awful new Desktop UI that essentially seems to build the Dropbox website into the client app, which is absolutely the last thing that I want.

Dropbox also recently raised their price from $100 per year to $120 per year. To be fair, they also bumped the storage from 1 TB to 2 TBs. Still, I have about a month to decide whether it's worth renewing for another year. Not sure what else to check out though, as I don't use Macs, don't trust Google, and had serious issues with OneDrive when I tried it a few years ago.

Perhaps I'm old school, but when I need to transfer a file, I just use the File Transfer Protocol, or FTP for short. There's a secure version called sFTP too.

I've never understood why people go out of their way to use http for file transfers. FTP was built for file transfers.

SFTP isn't really useful for sharing files with other people. Something like rsync over SSH can work pretty well for manually syncing data between systems under your control, but it gets confusing real fast if you modify files in multiple places, and becomes very quickly impractical one you throw more than two systems and phones/tablets into the mix.

Perhaps I'm old school, but when I need to transfer a file, I just use the File Transfer Protocol, or FTP for short. There's a secure version called sFTP too.

I've never understood why people go out of their way to use http for file transfers. FTP was built for file transfers.

SFTP isn't really useful for sharing files with other people. Something like rsync over SSH can work pretty well for manually syncing data between systems under your control, but it gets confusing real fast if you modify files in multiple places, and becomes very quickly impractical one you throw more than two systems and phones/tablets into the mix.

This is pretty much the reason I changed from Dropbox to syncthing years ago, but the problem is that not everyone has an instance of syncthing running. This sounds like the receiver only needs a browser, which should make transferring files to random people a lot easier.

I wonder if it tries to find recipients within a LAN or if it forces you to go through the internet pipes.

* Robustness. Dropbox has no problem with me pulling thousands of changes from a huge git repo. Both Google Drive and OneDrive choked badly - sync hangs and duplicate files (iCloud Drive did fine although was very slow to finish syncing up all the changes)

I've had the opposite experience, though my setup for it is odd. I primarily use OneDrive, but Scrivener for iOS only works with DropBox (not even iCloud) and I set up a symbolic link to connect the OneDrive folder on my Windows PCs with the DropBox folder to keep it all in sync. However, DropBox routinely stops syncing on the Windows machines so changes don't propagate like they should. Restart DropBox and it syncs just fine.

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* Easy link sharing. OneDrive/Google Drive/iCloud Drive all let you share links allowing anyone with the link access to the file, but they all make you jump through extra hoops to get a shareable link and default to more limited access. Dropbox just lets me right-click and get a link immediately.

In Windows 10 you can generate a OneDrive link by right clicking in Windows Explorer, choose "Share a OneDrive Link" and it's copied to clipboard. I didn't check the level of access, but I'd rather the easy way default to being more limited.

Meh, since Dropbox limited their free accounts to 3 devices I have abandoned them for OneDrive.

This.

I recently upgraded my phone, and ran into this new limitation, and had to cull several devices just to get it added.

The net result is that I've migrated from the platform.

Dropbox has a really good phone document scanner though - better than the one built into iPhones. How does Onedrive compare?

OneDrive's document scanner has worked well for me, though I've hardly given it a stern test; it appears to be an incorporation of the old OfficeLens app, so if you tested that and it didn't work for your usage scenario then it's likely still not going to be that useful to you.

I'm still scratching my head over exactly what this is in a more technical sense. Neither the Ars article nor any of the Dropbox press releases actually explain that, more focusing on the UI bits like custom branding and password protection. There's quite a few discrete things that a "direct file sharing service" could actually be.

Is it seeding files from my system when someone wants to download a copy, like BitTorrent? Is it a separate facility from Dropbox proper that lets you upload large files once and then get a download link, like Firefox Send? Is it just a way to send files already stored in your Dropbox without the sync features? If it is the latter, how is it different from just generating and sending an anonymous link rather than directly sending collaboration invites? On top of that, if it is just a new way to send files already stored in Dropbox proper, does that mean that Dropbox's individual file size limit is getting boosted to 100GB? That would be a pretty big change unto itself. For that matter, is the "100GB" in question here one file or multiple files stored in one "mini-Dropbox" just for the transfer session (a friend once needed to send a large Minecraft world and related server files in a ZIP file to me once because he was away from a stable connection, a mechanism to upload and send one huge file over the Internet just once without dealing with storage limits and the like would have been very helpful in that case; but the Dropbox site shows multiple media files getting uploaded in the example animation, which leads me to believe this is just a mechanism to, for example, send a bunch of finished media files for a project to someone without the overhead of having a full solution to sync their changes back in place)?

The tool being described here seems pretty interesting, but they're also being really vague about what it actually is, thus making me scratch my head over what use case it's actually targeting.

I don't think I'll ever forgive Dropbox for their arbitrary and unexplained dropping of all Linux filesystems that aren't ext4. XFS, ZFS and btrfs are commonly used in Linux and have many advantages over ext4, and when pressed they gave some BS reply about needing xattr support... which XFS had for _years_ before being implemented in ext4.

Basically was just an arbitrary 'f you' to their Linux users without any good technical reasoning. Even the check was literally just parsing your mount points to check the filesystem, it wasn't actually testing anything for compatibility.

* Robustness. Dropbox has no problem with me pulling thousands of changes from a huge git repo. Both Google Drive and OneDrive choked badly - sync hangs and duplicate files (iCloud Drive did fine although was very slow to finish syncing up all the changes)

That is because Dropbox prioritize syncing over storage. They are very good with syncing across devices without issues. That is one of their strength for that. I only use them for syncing my Keepass database.

I used to had an issue with OneDrive choking with syncing when it come to duplicate files. I discovered it was Office Upload Center and OneDrive interfering each other syncing process which cause a file conflicts or weird duplicated files. I set OneDrive to let Offices application to handle their own syncing (I assume Office 365 use Office Upload Center to do the syncing). Then the issue is fixed. So far there never been an issue.

Perhaps I'm old school, but when I need to transfer a file, I just use the File Transfer Protocol, or FTP for short. There's a secure version called sFTP too.

I've never understood why people go out of their way to use http for file transfers. FTP was built for file transfers.

SFTP isn't really useful for sharing files with other people.

I understand that sftp and ftp are not as convenient as more modern file sharing solutions, but I’m having trouble grasping how they aren’t useful for sharing files with others; that’s literally one of the things ftp was designed for.

I understand that sftp and ftp are not as convenient as more modern file sharing solutions, but I’m having trouble grasping how they aren’t useful for sharing files with others; that’s literally one of the things ftp was designed for.

FTP doesn't play well with NAT. Most NAT firewalls include a special "helper" for handling FTP, but it often doesn't work.

Meh, since Dropbox limited their free accounts to 3 devices I have abandoned them for OneDrive.

Yeah. I was not impressed that they sent out no communication at all about this change. All the emails I get from them, and they didn't think maybe they should mention this? They go out of their way to hide the 3 device limitation, and don't even mention it on the plan comparison page. I got surprised by it when I got a new machine and couldn't link it. I would have paid, but the cheapest plan is $10 for 2TB and I'm using 3GB. No thanks.

Working on migrating to something else... just not sure what. Might be the push I need to self-host something.

I am already paying for Office365 to get Office, so I have some comically large OneDrive limit, but I almost certainly would have switched to OneDrive anyway. It used to be clunky, but with the recent Windows 10 updates there's now OS supported download on demand, so the files always look like they are there, and they just download them when accessed, which makes it a lot more practical to stuff more things in there. It took them a while, but they have gotten better than Dropbox IMO.

I'm still scratching my head over exactly what this is in a more technical sense.

As far as I can tell it's a file hosting feature, like Mega, Mediafire, etc. Normal Dropbox is syncing, this is just throwing a file up for people to grab. It's not really worth the attention it's getting to be honest.

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I understand that sftp and ftp are not as convenient as more modern file sharing solutions, but I’m having trouble grasping how they aren’t useful for sharing files with others; that’s literally one of the things ftp was designed for.

I'm sure they meant sharing in the sense of throwing a file up for someone specific to download without hassle. There's a lot of overhead involved with setting up and running an SFTP server, managing users and passwords, etc. Presumably with Dropbox's new thing you just upload the file and give the email of the person you want to have access to the file and Dropbox handles the rest.

I understand that sftp and ftp are not as convenient as more modern file sharing solutions, but I’m having trouble grasping how they aren’t useful for sharing files with others; that’s literally one of the things ftp was designed for.

FTP doesn't play well with NAT. Most NAT firewalls include a special "helper" for handling FTP, but it often doesn't work.

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